The Tragic Hero and You

Mandela’s Lesson for the Orthodox Jewish Community

(6/4/20 - It is deeply unfortunate that this article is once again relevant, after the murder of George Floyd. I am sorry to have to reshare this once again, to articulate a Jewish view of racism.)

The introduction to my speech sounded more like an apology than an endorsement.

I was invited to address a memorial held for Nelson Mandela in Montreal, along with several prominent anti-apartheid activists and leaders in the Black community. When the Master of Ceremonies called me to the podium, he began by saying “you might think it’s strange to invite a Rabbi to speak tonight…”. After all, what would a Rabbi have to do with the anti-apartheid movement? So the MC explained that Mandela had a longstanding and deep relationship with the South African Jewish community, (including many Rabbis), and that including a Rabbi on the program was both understandable and fitting.

But the sad thing is, there are many in the Orthodox community who would consider it strange for an Orthodox Rabbi to speak at a memorial for Nelson Mandela. Some have been preoccupied by Mandela’s support for the Palestinian cause. (Although many, including Abe Foxman, have noted Mandela’s connection to Israel and multiple Israeli leaders.)  But in other forums another, uglier attitude has bubbled up to the surface. To these views, Mandela was undeserving of any Orthodox Jew’s attention because Mandela was a lowly black.

Racism is a significant issue in the Orthodox community. In the last two weeks, while away on vacation, I got to visit two different synagogues in New York and Florida. In each, I overheard nasty remarks about blacks. (I get to hear more on vacation than in my own synagogue; in my own synagogue, people are much more guarded about what they say when the Rabbi is around.) Sadly, I cannot dismiss these remarks as outliers. While there are no direct studies on anti-black prejudice in the Orthodox community, anecdotally, there are too many examples to be dismissed. Looking around the internet, from comments on blogs, to videos of well known lecturers, to multiple Facebook posts, one can see numerous examples of racism in the Orthodox community. David Klinghoffer, who was then an editor for the National Review, wrote a two page letter in 1994 to the journal Tradition recounting multiple instances he heard bigoted remarks in the Orthodox community on the Upper West Side. As he put it, “Orthodox bigots express themselves without the concern that anyone present will disagree enough to take offense”. Sadly, things haven’t improved very much in the last twenty years.

Of course the vast majority of Orthodox Jews bear no prejudice. But the fact that a noisy minority can harbor such views is shocking and intolerable, in particular because Orthodox Jews are the last people on earth who should be racists.

A serious believer in the Torah cannot accept racism. Each human is created in the image of God, and has infinite worth. The Mishnah tells us that the reason why Adam is created alone is in order to teach the lesson of equality, so that no man can say “my father is greater than yours”(Sanhedrin 37a). And of course the commandment to “love the stranger because you were strangers in Egypt” (Deteronomy 10:19) which would include a responsibility to any group that is marginalized and oppressed.  As Rav Ahron Soloveichik wrote “from the standpoint of the Torah…. any discrimination shown to a human being on account of the color of his or her skin constitutes loathsome barbarity.” The religious imperative to treat people of every color and race equally is beyond dispute.

But what worries me even more about Orthodox racism is how it corrupts the values our community treasures. In this community, where the Yeshiva is the central institution, the intellect is prized and moral sensitivity is treasured. And despite this, people will mindlessly accept something as stupid as racism, the belief that somehow the color of your skin has a correlation to the content of your character. (And if the external attributes matter that much, why just skin color? Why not eye color? Or hair color? Or nose size?) And the same people who can appreciate a Torah insight talking about showing moral sensitivity to everything, even inanimate objects, will then go and treat Blacks worse than dirt. Racism undermines our identity as wise and understanding nation.

Racism is very dangerous. It can destroy the lives of those who are the objects of racism; but it can also destroy the souls of those who are racists. And in the Orthodox community, we need to focus on how racism can destroy our souls.

This is a lesson we can learn from Nelson Mandela.  After having sat in prison for 27 years, he refused to respond by hating the white community. He wrote that a “man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness…. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”.


This lesson is one our community needs to move to the forefront, because our souls depend on it. The goal of Judaism is to make a Kiddush Hashem, to sanctify God’s name. But you cannot sanctify God’s name when you mock and mistreat other human beings because they have the wrong skin color.

The Bible and the Art of Negotiation

Thank You Pauline For Excluding Me From the Parti Quebecois

By: Chaim Steinmetz

The Parti Quebecois took an important step at its convention Saturday when it decided that candidates for the PQ can no longer wear visible religious symbols. This new policy helped clarify an issue that has arisen in the PQ’s past roughly……zero times. But the PQ felt it was important to institute this rule as a gesture, to explain how serious they are about their “Charter Affirming The Values Of Secularism And The Religious Neutrality Of The State, As Well As The Equality Of Men And Women, And The Framing Of Accommodation Requests” (or “Charter of Values”, for short.)

This means that if I wanted to run for the PQ, I could no longer wear my kippah. The PQ feels that public officials shouldn’t display religious symbols, because it would compromise their neutrality. But one wonders, what does neutrality mean? Why not apply neutrality to other forms of expression? Will they allow someone running for the PQ to wear a Habs jersey? Perhaps there’s a diehard former Québec Nordiques fan who roots for the Colorado Avalanche, who will be intimidated by the jersey; and who knows, there may be some hockey fans in Gatineau who root for a non-Quebec team like the Senators? Perhaps the PQ should order candidates not to wear regional baseball caps, with names like Montreal or Herouxville written on them; after all, by showing favoritism to one region, they are losing their neutrality!

   

Apologists for the Charter of Secular Values will counter that religion is different than sports or regional interests. To them, religion is uniquely divisive, and therefore must be completely hidden in the public sphere. After all, wars are fought over religion. But then again, most wars are motivated by nationalism; does this mean that nationalism isn’t kosher? Should we remove nationalism from the public sphere? (Last I looked, the PQ was a nationalist party).

Actually, experience shows that rather than being divisive, full freedom of expression brings about true tolerance. Just to the south of us is a deeply religious country, the United States. In it people of multiple religions work together, and many of them wear their religious symbols proudly. And yet, despite these shocking displays of kippahs, turbans and hijabs, even in the public service, the United States does a better job than Quebec in ensuring that people of different backgrounds get along with each other. (Not to mention that the U.S. economy has grown much faster than our own as well.) In the American system, the most important cultural values one must learn relate to democracy and civil rights, not clothing styles or religious habits.

While grasping for a rationale for this law, apologists advance another argument. They say that the new Charter of Values is really about promoting the equality of women; they claim the hijab is an instrument of male domination. While the patriarchal structure of deeply religious societies certainly can lead to the oppression women, refusing women with hijabs jobs certainly doesn’t liberate them; and it’s absurd to believe that discriminating against religious women will improve women's rights. And by refusing religious Muslims jobs, you prevent these very women from truly integrating into Quebec society.

Then, of course, there's the Celine Dion argument: “you are in Quebec and we have embraced you and opened our country for you to live in a better world, you have to adapt to our rules”. In other words, if you want to live here, you have to be like us. But please tell me, what is “being like us”? Is there a Quebec uniform I somehow overlooked? I see people dressed in every possible way, business suits and ties to colored hair and piercings. Some people wear tuques; others wear kippahs. What’s the difference? Unless of course, the difference is that by wearing a kippah, you acknowledge that your ancestors lived somewhere other than New France.

Jumping past the labored explanations, it’s obvious that the Charter of Values is a blatant political ploy. It is the solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Without cause and without reason, it cuts down our right to self expression. The Parti Québecois simply wants to advance their political goals, and hopes that demagoguery will lead them into the promised land of sovereignty; Madame Marois cannot pretend that she doesn’t know that this secular charter will appeal most to xenophobes and racists.

I oppose this charter, not because I'm Jewish, but because I'm a Canadian and a Quebecois. Democracy is founded not just on the rule of the majority, but also on  protecting the rights of the minority. The social contract that holds all of us together requires me to respect the PQ government, even if I’d prefer another one, and it requires this government to protect my rights, even if I didn’t vote for them. And one needs to recognize, that democratic rights can be slowly sliced away like salami, until they eventually disappear; just look at what Chavez did in Venezuela, and Putin in Russia. Both of these autocrats used popular support to create near dictatorships. Any country that tolerates a pointless restriction on civil rights is courting danger.

Pauline Marois has now made it clear: as a kippah wearing Jew, I don’t belong in the Parti Quebecois. Well, I’m glad to be excluded. I’d never want to be part of a party that shamelessly undermines rights and courts bigots; I’d never want to be part of a party that will trample on democracy in order to further its political goals.

 So, thank you Pauline for excluding me from the Parti Quebecois.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Rabbi of the Tifereth Beth David Synagogue in Cote Saint Luc

The Jewish Kippah Problem

Quebec has a kippah problem. A proposed “Charter of Values” will prohibit public employees from wearing hijabs, turbans, kippahs, and bizarrely oversized crosses. Apparently, our government believes religious symbols worn by less than 1% of the population threaten to turn Quebec into a theocracy.  

The Jewish community has united in opposition to the Charter of Values. This threat to minority religious rights is unsettling, and Jews of all backgrounds feel a sentimental tie to the beleaguered kippah.

But as Jews, we have our own kippah problem. Our attitudes towards the kippah reflect our ambivalence about being a Jew in the non-Jewish world.

After the Jews were given political rights in Europe, many chose the route of partial assimilation. Their motto was “be a Jew at home, and a mensch in the street”. In their desire for acceptance, Jews modified their public image.

The tradition of wearing the kippah was quickly tossed away. At the turn of the century, the kippah was discouraged by the Reform movement as an ancient relic; one historian remarked that “worship with an uncovered head” was a “hallmark of Reform Judaism”.

Other Jews saw integration as dangerous. They followed an ideology of “shalem”, of being distinct. They spoke Yiddish, wore a shtreimel, and used their Hebrew names on official documents. These Jews insisted on being a counterculture, and defiantly refused to integrate.

Most Jews fall between the poles of ghettoization and assimilation. We know how to fit into the larger culture, yet still want to be profoundly Jewish as well. And so we wonder: how different should we be?

And that is the Jewish kippah problem. We want to be serious Jews, but we also don’t want to stick out that much.  It’s a simple psychological fact: people want to fit in with the majority. Even Orthodox Jews are sometimes uncomfortable wearing a kippah. It’s not uncommon that when I’m in remote venues with few Jews, I’ll meet a modern Orthodox friend who’s chosen to wear a baseball cap instead of a kippah, so that his head covering is less conspicuous.

And this kippah problem is our greatest challenge: how to be comfortable while being different. A new Pew study shows that 32% of American Jews had a Christmas tree. (By contrast, only 22% kept kosher).  Christmas is ubiquitous; to resist it is difficult, because it’s difficult to swim against the stream. To put it directly, kippahs are awkward while Christmas trees are comfortable: that’s our kippah problem.

I wish I had a magic solution for this, but I don’t. Being a Jew in North America means having the courage to of your convictions, and proudly be different.  And that’s not so simple, even for a Rabbi.

Recently, I was on a CBC panel debating the Charter of Values. I left just before sundown, at the last moments for the afternoon prayer. The vigorous debate had left me feeling a bit leery of public displays of religion, and I wondered whether I should pray covertly while sitting in my car. I sat for moment in my car, and then reconsidered; I then stood outside in the parking lot and prayed. And those moments of prayer inspired me to realize that yes, you can be both a mensch and Jew, both in the street and at home.

Who is Your Bad Jew?

Apparently, I am from Amalek, the ancient nation dedicated to destroying the Jews. I wear a knitted kipa; a leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi has declared that Jews who wear knitted kippot are “Amalek”, and remarked “Are these people even Jews?”.

Truth be told, I’m not shocked; nasty rhetoric is as old as Jewish history. But put the nastiness aside, and you will recognize that we do have a need to define what it means to be a good Jew, and at the same time, decide who is a bad Jew. Emile Durkheim explained that reacting to deviance is a way of drawing communal boundaries, and defining what a community is about. And if we’re honest, we’ll admit that every group of Jews, including our very own, does exactly this: we decide who is a bad Jew. Jewish identity, like any group identity, requires us to decide which heresies are unacceptable. Every Jew, from Reconstructionist to Ultra-Orthodox, has a clear definition of who is a bad Jew; and there’s a laundry list of disqualifiers, including intermarriage, hatred of Israel, lack of observance on one side, and intolerance, homophobia, and fundamentalism on the other side. Our reaction to deviance can lead a major Orthodox Rabbinic figure to be stringent on a minor matter of custom “lest it lead to Reform”, and lead well known Reform rabbis to call his movement’s re-embrace of mitzvot “right-wing... religiosity -- even fundamentalism”. Yes, it might sound funny, but without a clear idea of who is a bad Jew, we cannot truly define ourselves. If we are everything, then we are nothing.

But where we fail is when we turn the search for the bad Jew into the essence of who we are. Kai Erikson points out that some communities will seek out “bad” members to denounce; in doing so, the community unites in anger at the threat, the deviant who wants to “ruin” the community. But for Jews this course is ultimately self destructive. One ends up with a Judaism of negativity, a bitter mix of dogma, criticism and anger. People who don’t share our high standards of kashrut or political correctness will be excluded and insulted. Instead of being a united people and the proud inheritors of a 3300 year old tradition, we’ll end up being anti-intermarriage, anti-anti-Semitism, anti-fanaticism and anti-everyone else.

When a rabbi denounces slightly less Orthodox Jews as anti-Semites, it’s time to realize that internecine battles are destroying us. The head of the Volozhin Yeshiva, Rabbi Naphtali Tzvi Berlin, wrote that legitimate criticism can morph into self destructive hunts for heresy and needless hatred. If we fixate on denouncing heretics, we’ll end up turning everyone into a heretic. And in the process, we’ll forget our heritage and our community.

Everyone of us has a portrait of what we think a bad Jew looks like. The problem is, if all we do is fixate on this portrait, the only truly bad Jew is ourselves.

We Didn’t Get Here by Complaining

Some people are only happy when they’re miserable.

The joke is told about the well known businessman who has a heart ailment, and is taken to the best hospital in New York. A few days later, he abruptly transfers to a small hospital best known for its mediocrity. When he arrives there, the attending physician is intrigued, wondering why this man has transferred from a world class hospital to his humble facility. So he asks his celebrity patient what was wrong with the previous hospital.

"Was the medical care not good enough?"

"No - the medical care was remarkable, with one doctor more brilliant than the next. I can't complain".

"Was the nursing care OK?"

"The nurses were absolute angels. I can't complain"

"What about the food and the rooms?"

"The food was exceptional, restaurant quality, and the hospital rooms were just redecorated. I can't complain".

Finally, the doctor asks: "So why did you come here?"

"Here…I CAN complain!"

Like most jokes, this one tells an awkward truth: many people feel their best when they have something to grumble about. Grievances and criticisms are their raison d’etre, and they’ll enthusiastically share their gripes with anyone who will listen. The curmudgeon hunts for complaints, and savors new opportunities to gripe. (We’re not talking about constructive criticism here; we’re talking about old fashioned griping, where the gripe is an end in itself).

In rabbinic literature two biblical characters, Datan and Aviram, are associated with each and every complaint the Jews had in the desert. This is the rabbis way of saying that for Datan and Aviram, complaints were instinctive, more a reflection of their character than their circumstances. Much like the man in the hospital, Datan and Aviram love to kvetch for its own sake; they are chronic complainers. And chronic complainers are only happy when they’re miserable.

Most of us know someone like this. And if we’re honest with ourselves, at times, most of us ARE someone like this. Complaining needlessly is a guilty little pleasure that we all enjoy, an emotional free parking space where we can be smug and self pitying at the same time. 

Complaining is seductive because it deflects responsibility from oneself. The complainer’s universe is controlled by incompetent people and immutable bad luck, with nothing more that the complainer can do. After all, what do you expect from them, when the “bozos in charge” ruin everything? In the desert, the complainers whine to Moses “Why did you take us out of Egypt”, content that they themselves carry no responsibility for their own future. After all, whatever goes wrong is Moses’/God’s/ Pharaoh’s fault.

Kvetching can also be very comforting. Buried beneath the constant stream of complaints is a dark background of pessimism; the complainer simply doesn’t expect things to be better. Each complaint is merely another thread in the fabric of pessimism, another way of establishing that life will always disappoint.  While negativity sounds shrill and bitter to others, it is in many ways very comforting to a pessimist;  the secret of pessimism is that the pessimist is never disappointed. When you expect the worst, very little fails to meet your low expectations.  Pessimism is an emotional shock absorber, a way of insuring that one is never really disappointed. The fact that the Jews who left Egypt are pessimists and complainers makes good sense; having survived generations of adversity where a promised redemption persistently failed to arrive, pessimism was the defense mechanism that allowed them to disregard disappointment after disappointment. Like other broken hearted pessimists, the Jews who left Egypt complained in order to diminish the pain of future disappointments.

According to stereotype, Jews are inveterate complainers, the people who have turned “kvetching” into an art form (and certainly, it's funny to poke fun at Jewish kvetching; just ask Jon Stewart). And as someone who works in the Jewish community, I can tell you that there’s truth to this stereotype. But beyond the jokes, the reality is quite different. Instead of just whining about 1,900 years in exile, we have built a Jewish state; instead of griping about the Holocaust, we have rebuilt a proud and successful Jewish community. Yes, we’ve had our moments of kvetching; but complaints were never the final word.  We have chosen to dream of a better future instead of dwelling on a disappointing past.

It could have turned out differently. After the Shoah, the Jewish world could have followed Datan and Aviram’s example and wallowed in complaints and pessimism.  But that’s not what happened, due to a cadre of heroes who chose to transcend negativity.

These men and women had broken hearts, but strong spirits. They persevered, building families, businesses and communities. They sweated and slaved and finally succeeded. And at times, they even smiled.

Those smiles may seem innocuous; but in actuality, when someone has every reason in the world to complain, smiling is very heroic indeed.

Lindsey, a young woman in our synagogue went on the March of the Living with her grandfather, a holocaust survivor. When she returned, she told this anecdote about her trip:

“I cried because for that small moment, it felt real……. I thought about those few minutes I spent beside my grandfather who had done this identical march 60 years ago in completely different conditions. We never really spoke much about his experiences in the holocaust except for this one incident. 60 years ago my grandfather and his father began the death march standing beside one another starving and in freezing cold weather…..(and then) it was my grandfather standing alone. My great grandfather was too weak to keep up with everyone so they shot him in front of my grandfather’s very eyes. It wasn’t this that made me cry either. It was the fact that when I was marching beside my grandfather, he was smiling at me. He had experienced this torture first hand, and yet when I, his only granddaughter, was walking next to him, he was brave enough and strong enough to smile.”

This courageous smile tells the story of contemporary Jewish history. In the last 70 years, the Jewish world has undergone a change of fortune unparalleled in human history.  But we didn’t get here by complaining; we got here with heroism, hard work, and….courageous smiles.